The advances made in network techniques or information processing technology have led to the rapid spread of global-scale networks such as the Internet. Various modes of usage of such networks and various services using the networks have been proposed and realized along with this.
One of the services offered via this type of network is auctions conducted over the network—what is called “Internet auctions”—(hereinafter referred to as “network auctions”).
An explanation will first be made of the most general method of the network auctions, that is, the reserve designation type method of network auctions.
First, a person who is going to submit a certain article for auction (seller) enters information concerning the article to be submitted into a server of an auction sponsor via the network from his or her terminal. The information to be entered at this time includes an image of the article, a description of the article, the category of the article, minimum reserve, a terms of the auction, etc.
When this information is entered into the server of the auction sponsor, the auction is commenced.
All participants interested in the auction can access the server of the auction sponsor from their terminals connected to the network to view the goods. At this time, usually they can selectively view articles in which they are interested using for example the category as a hint.
When there is an article which a participant wishes to purchase when viewing the products, he or she sends a notification of intent to purchase, that is a bid, indicating his or her desired purchase price.
Then, at the end of the preset auction period, the person who had placed the highest bid wins the auction. Note that if this highest bid does not reach the minimum reserve set by the seller, the transaction fails to be established.
In this way, in a network auction, anyone can easily set up transactions of desired articles or participate in transactions, so this service can be said to sufficiently take advantage of the characteristics of a network.
E-commerce such as such network auctions are expected to spread more widely and develop.
In e-commerce such as such network auctions, however, there are several problems. Transactions cannot be said to be being conducted sufficiently actively.
For example, as mentioned above, in the minimum reserve designation system, a main method of auctions, the transaction fails to be established unless the highest bid of the bidders reaches the minimum reserve designated by the seller. The cause of such a failure of establishment of transactions can be primarily said to be that the minimum reserve set by the seller is too high with respect to the market price. In other words, it can be said that, when general people participate in a network auction, the proper setting of the minimum reserve is difficult. As a result, the percentage of transactions failing to be established becomes high.
Also, if a transaction fails to be established, in actuality most sellers lower the minimum reserve and submit the articles for auction again. In the network auctions up to now, however, even in such a case, they must perform registration procedures of the auction again from the start, so there is a problem of troublesome procedures.
Due to such a problem, the percentage of transactions failing to be established becomes high. This became an obstacle to greater activity in network auctions and transactions based on the same.
Also, in the network auction systems up to now, after the successful bid is determined, both of the seller and the successful bidder usually have to perform the following troublesome procedures.
First, the seller and the successful bidder communicate with each other so that the successful bidder informs his or her address to the seller.
The seller inquires about the shipping fee, insurance fee, etc. to a shipper based on the information and notifies the result to the successful bidder.
Then, when receiving the shipping fee and the insurance fee from the successful bidder together with the product price, the seller requests the shipping from the shipper, packs the product, and actually sends the product.
Namely, in the network auction systems up to now, the sponsor administering the server only notifies the result to the seller and the successful bidder after performing the successful bid processing. As a result, both of the seller and the successful bidder had to perform troublesome and complicated procedures.
Also, not only were the procedures troublesome, but it was also necessary to make inquiries with the shippers and communicate with distant locations. Therefore, there where the problems that a long time was taken until the transaction was completed and the efficiency as the commercial transaction was poor.
This has become an obstacle to greater activity of network auctions and transactions based on the same. Improvement has therefore been demanded.
Further, in recent years, there has been increasing trouble in e-commerce such as such network auctions. This has resulted in a loss of trust in e-commerce and has become an obstacle to broader utilization of e-commerce.
Up to now, when such trouble occurred and the trouble could not be resolved by discussions among the concerned parties, the general practice has been to bring a suit before a court so as to solve the problem by judicial judgement. With such a method, however, there was a problem in that a long time of up to several years and considerable trouble and cost were required until a judgement was rendered and the trouble was resolved.
Therefore, in order to sufficiently deal with the problem of low compensation for damages in e-commerce and improve the feeling of safety with respect to such e-commerce and the stability of e-commerce, it has been demanded to construct a trial system capable of quickly and inexpensively resolve trouble in e-commerce.